Sorry! Maud mouthed, putting a finger across her lips to indicate that she did not want Julia to tell Mother how much the boys already teased her.
Matilda waved her hand dismissively. “Mr. Crouse believes that I’m not raising your sister to be ladylike,” she told Julia. “For the record, let it be known that this is true. Too much control can stunt a girl, sap her of courage, and render her weak.” Maud cast a furtive glace at Julia, and sure enough, she saw her sister’s mouth pucker in frustration. This was one of Mother’s pet theories, that girls needed to be free in order to learn to be strong, but to Maud, it always sounded like a backhanded insult to her sister, who had left school years ago.
The front door pushed open and Papa entered. Maud flung her arms around his legs so hard that he pretended his petite daughter had almost knocked him over. Scattered across the dining room table were straw, corn husks, twine, brown paper, and all the rest of the makings of the crow hospital.
“Oh!” Matilda said, sniffing a slight burnt odor in the air. “I’ve forgotten entirely about our supper! Julia, quickly!” Obediently, Julia set down the mending basket and ran into the kitchen, the torn petticoat at last forgotten.
Papa’s eyes crinkled as he removed his coat and hat while listening to Maud’s story. He spent a long moment admiring the crow. Then Maud remembered the very best thing about the day: her cat’s-eye, which she had put in a small box on the window ledge for safekeeping.
Papa held it up to the light of the gas lamp, catching its amber sparkle.
He got down on one knee and pressed it back into his daughter’s hands.
“Boys will be looking to win it back,” he said. “Keep your skills sharp and I trust you won’t let them.”
* * *
—
MATILDA SET ABOUT NURSING that crow with the same determination she brought to every task. Maud’s crow grew rapidly, and soon she let him outside, where he perched on the fence, showing a fearlessness in the face of Mr. Crouse’s scarecrow that Maud quite envied. Every morning, she brought him corn, and though he had learned to fly, he still stayed nearby, seeming happy with the arrangement. Maud was certain that he recognized her. He made a loud caw-caw sound whenever he saw her.
A few days after Mr. Crow’s emancipation, however, Mr. Crouse showed up on their doorstep again. Matilda went out onto the porch, closing the door behind herself. Maud didn’t hear much of the short conversation between Mother and the neighbor, but as soon as Matilda came back inside, she burst out laughing, until she was bending over and tears were rolling down her face.
“What is it?” Maud asked.
Finally, her mother caught her breath enough to tell Maud what had happened.
“It seems that our neighbor believes that our crow is mocking him,” she said, wiping the tears from her eyes.
“Mocking him?” asked Julia. “What ever can he mean?”
“Apparently,” Matilda said, “he believes that our crow has learned the English language, and instead of the normal cawing of a bird, our crow is taunting him by calling out his name: Bob Crouse! Bob Crouse!”
* * *
—
MAUD SAT CROSS-LEGGED IN the grass, wearing her new knee-high pants, which were ever so much more comfortable than a skirt and petticoat, and carried on a long one-sided conversation with her avian friend until he answered: Bob Crouse, Bob Crouse. And then Maud would reply to him, in her best crow voice: Bob Crouse, Bob Crouse.
One Saturday morning, Mr. Crow was in the backyard squawking when the loud crack of a shotgun sounded outside, followed by silence.
Thinking her pet crow might have been frightened away by the sound, Maud went out to the yard to investigate and saw Mr. Crouse staring out his second-story window. He waved and smiled.
Mr. Crow lay on the grass near the fence with a bullet hole straight through his heart.
“Mother!”
Maud ran across the backyard, through the kitchen, and into the parlor. Mother had her glasses on and was writing something. Maud knew not to interrupt when her mother was working, but Matilda must have heard her daughter’s sobs and seen her tearstained face and was at her side in an instant.
Mother’s face drained white when she saw her daughter’s pet lying in a pool of blood in the grass.
“This is murder!” she said. She scooped up the crow, blood and all, and grabbed Maud’s hand. They went straight down the walk and marched up onto the Crouse front porch, where Mother pounded on his brass knocker with a fury of which only she was capable.
The door opened, and there stood the offender himself, still with a big grin on his face.
Without a word, Mother unfolded her skirt to reveal their poor tortured crow. His still, glassy eye stared out at Maud, piercing her heart.
“Looks like you’ve got dead vermin, there, Mrs. Gage.”
“This was my daughter’s pet. You had no right to do what you’ve done.”
“I’d say that was a good riddance,” he retorted.
“What could you possibly have had against this poor crow?” she said. “He was no danger to your garden. He took corn straight from the palms of our hands.”
“His noisy cawing kept me up all night,” Mr. Crouse said. “I couldn’t get a wink of sleep.”
“Killing him was completely uncalled for.”
“And what are you going to do about it?” He chuckled. “Are you going to write the Declaration of the Rights of Crows? ‘I hold these truths to be self-evident,’?” he tittered, looking down his long, bony nose. “?‘That all men, women, vermin, critters, and creatures of the field are created equal…’?”
Mother’s voice was steady. “I believe that to be true, Mr. Crouse. Good day.” Mother’s chin raised up another few inches, and from the way she grasped her daughter’s hand, Maud knew that she better look proud too, even though inside her heart was breaking. Back at the Gage house, Maud burst into tears again, and Matilda reached over and pinched her arm, hard.
Maud gasped. “What did you do that for?”
“That’s what I do,” Matilda said. “You’re old enough to learn that crying gets you nowhere. If you pinch yourself, it will remind you that it’s better to be strong—when you’re strong, then you can fight.”
It was raining and blood-red maple leaves were falling in clumps later that day when they buried Mr. Crow in their backyard. Dry-eyed, Maud carried the crow’s casket, which Papa had carefully fashioned out of scraps of wood. Papa dug a narrow hole in the ground just under the apple tree. Maud lowered the small box into the hole and solemnly covered it with a flat rock. Papa spoke the eulogy, and Mother added a few words about how crows were loathed for eating people’s corn and dressing in black feathers but that even so, they deserved equal protection, for they possessed inalienable rights. Maud thrust her hand into the pocket of her short pants and pulled out her amber cat’s-eye marble. At least she had managed to hold on to that prize. They sang “All Things Bright and Beautiful.” Once they had finished up with the amens, Maud called out a loud caw-caw that sounded suspiciously like she was saying Bob Crouse, Bob Crouse. Pretty soon, they had all joined in, even Mother and Papa. That was how the funeral of Mr. Crow ended up with peals of laughter.
After that day, Maud felt better about the demise of Mr. Crow, but she soon realized that the crow’s funeral had done nothing to set her mother’s ire to rest. Matilda took up a crusade, writing letters to the state legislature. She was up in Albany all the time anyway, doing her business as the president of the New York State Women’s Suffrage Association, and she could talk a legislator’s ear off whenever she wanted something enough.
Not much later, Matilda retrieved a letter from the mail slot and fluttered it at Maud triumphantly. The New York State Legislature had passed a bill making it illegal to kill a wild animal that was being kept as a pet.
“You see, this is what the law can do. You’re going to study to be an attorney. With a diploma in law, you will be able to right this wrong and many others. You will grow up to be strong and brave, and you will protect the crows of the future,” she said. As Mother had assured her many times before, every man, woman, and child, Negro, believer, unbeliever, and even the critters of the field deserved an equal shot at happiness.
Maud clasped her hand around the cool surface of the cat’s-eye in her pocket, but she felt, deep inside, that her mother was wrong. All the laws in the world couldn’t bring her crow back, nor make her forget the forlorn look in his eye. And how was she so certain a girl could earn a degree in law? She’d never heard of any woman achieving such a thing—not even her formidable mother, not even Auntie Susan, her mother’s dearest friend, the famous Susan B. Anthony! A diploma for a woman seemed even more impossible than a crow getting a fair shake in the world.
CHAPTER
4
ITHACA, NEW YORK